The Cinematheque

“As a summa and final testament, L’argent is magisterial. It makes most other films look puny and inconsequential by comparison.”

James Quandt

The awe-inspiring farewell film from one of cinema’s most rigorous masters shared the Best Director prize at Cannes in 1983 with Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, and was selected by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest films of the 1980s. Freely adapted from a novella by Tolstoy (The Forged Coupon), L’argent charts the circulation of a counterfeit bank note and the contagion of evil it spreads as it passes from hand to hand. When an innocent man unwittingly uses it to pay for a meal, he falls into a disastrous downward spiral. As in all Bresson’s major works, the true drama here is internal, spiritual, metaphysical; it derives not from plot or character but emanates from a rigorous austerity and intensity, from a meticulous accumulation of detail. L’argent is one of Bresson’s best and most beautiful works.

In French with English subtitles

One of the Ten Greatest Films of All Time
Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Wang Bing, Sight and Sound 2022 poll

“At nearly eighty, Bresson’s power to renew our faith in cinema is as firm as one could wish for.”

Chris Peachment, Time Out

“Bresson, working his soundtrack as assiduously as his visuals, once again makes us realize how little use most films make of the resources of the cinema. A masterpiece.”

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader